Abusers Visited Salvation Army Boys Home at Night: Inquiry

By Dan Box
The Australian
January 30, 2014

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/abusers-visited-salvation-army-boys-home-at-night-inquiry/story-e6frg6nf-1226813957513

Undated image of children at a home in Bexley, which was tendered to the Royal Commission as part of the public hearing into the Salvation Army. Source: Supplied

BOYS living at a Salvation Army children's home in Sydney were sent to stay with adults and forced to have sex, or were sexually abused by unknown men who broke into their dormitories at night, an inquiry has been told.

In a written statement read to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today, one such victim described how this abuse took place at the Bexley boys' home run by Salvation Army officer Captain Lawrence Wilson.

"He physically raped me in his office within a few months of being there and it happened several more times," the man, who cannot be named, alleged in his statement.

"You would be sent out to stay with other people and they would do it to you or there were the prowlers, men who allegedly broke into the place at night and tampered with the boys.

"Even now I still can't sleep. There you would get visited in the night, so you were scared, you couldn't fall asleep.

"Wilson got me out of bed at night times. Sometimes it was strangers who came up the fire escape ... old men came in at night. There was no supervision," he said.

A NSW Police detective inspector, Rick John Cunningham, said he had investigated allegations from other alleged victims at the home who also said Wilson sent them to adults' houses to have sex.

"About a month after at the home (one victim) was called to Captain Wilson's office where he met a woman dressed in a Salvation Army uniform and her husband," Detective Inspector Cunningham told the commission.

"(The victim) was taken to their home where both the woman and the man sexually abused him.

"When he returned to Bexley Home (the victim) attempted to tell Captain Wilson what had happened but Captain Wilson said 'These are good people I send you out to' and caned him about 17 times."

The same boy was also allegedly sent to stay with other adults and sexually abused, the commission heard.

Wilson was later charged with several offences, including indecent assault and buggery, relating to five alleged victims, the commission heard, but was found not guilty in 2000.

He died in 2008.